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Comment by hopefulcynic | Hacker News Reader

> Most likely because Singapore is not also putting huge amount of people in detention camps and harvesting their organs.

To be fair, the chinese call it de-radicalization/re-education centers, which they set up after a few extremist separatist attacks which killed hundreds of people. And as for the organs, much of the west ( especially in europe ) take people's organs without their explicit consent (it's called opt-out organ "donation".

> Maybe if they had the scale to do so they would, but that's not really the question when it comes to public opinion.

Nonsense. It's called political expediency and the trade war. A decade ago, when china was our "friend", we were talking about "chimerica" and praising their handling of muslim extremists in xinjiang and china's help with our war on "muslim terrorists". A decade later and we are in the midst of a trade war and the propaganda changes.

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> And as for the organs, much of the west ( especially in europe ) take people's organs without their explicit consent (it's called opt-out organ "donation".

I feel like equating the forcible harvesting of organs to opt out organ donation is extremely disingenuous.

I have a feeling that "forcible havesting of organs" is just propaganda. I remember hearing about "forcible harvesting of organs" of the falun gong 20 years ago when the west and china were going through a difficult period of china's ascension to the WTO. And once the "difficulties" were overcome, nothing about falun gong and the "organ harvesting".

I also remember the propaganda about iraqi soldiers killing babies in hospitals which turned out to be a manufactured lie.

I'm sure the chinese government does a lot of bad things, like every major government, but the 24/7 ridiculous "news" we are getting now, is just propaganda.

I'm not a psychic, but I predicted the following when the trade war began.

1. "organ harvesting" ( to be fair I mistakenly assumed it would be tied to tibetans or the falun gong )

2. hong kong protest ( just like during the pivot to asia 5 years ago )

3. "chinese spies" or "politicians" magically defecting with outlandish stories

4. "international" awards ( nobel peace, think tank awards, whatever ) being awarded to politically expedient people

And if things really escalate, then I'll make another prediction - yellow peril style propaganda. And of course, the chinese will also escalate their propaganda.

The worrying part is the American public keeps falling for the same tricks: Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, Syria has chemical weapons, Gaddafi's soldiers supposedly issued viagra for raping women, voting Bush for second term, etc.

I have no doubt these countries have done horrible things, but they do not deserve to be invaded and subjected to millions of civilian deaths.

This is the internet. You can't retrospectively claim your predictions have come true without providing a dated link to when you actually made them.

If the PRC wants to be respected, they could publish information and allow journalists in instead of lying.

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